Chagas in an open-door school: lessons learned from a collaborative work

LEZICA M; MORDEGLIA C; SALSO D; SANMARTINO M

Health Education in Latin America: Views and Voices

Springer

Año: 2023;

Chagas is a health issue that involves complex socio-environmental interactions. Its biomedical and epidemiological aspects, despite being the most studied, represent only a glimpse of a much larger picture that needs to be fully characterized in order to understand the problem at large. The need to fill these missing gaps was the driving force that led us –a few years ago– to create a multidisciplinary group proposing an innovative view of Chagas in diverse educational contexts. By working collaboratively with different social stakeholders, we aim to generate and foster an innovatory view and understanding of Chagas disease. A specific example of this approach is the work carried out at an open-door kindergarten school of a rural area in the suburbs of the city of La Plata (Buenos Aires, Argentina). This kindergarten provides a special educational atmosphere, where words such as inclusion and teamwork become a reality by the active participation of teachers, parents, and children. In this chapter we will describe how this nurturing environment was leveraged to create a space in which to talk about and discuss the problem of Chagas from a new perspective, with an active participation of the children and their families. We also share the lessons we learned in this experience hoping they will inspire similar projects in other places or topics, having mainly learned that the contribution of each person involved, not only enhanced the knowledge of the others, but also enriched them both professionally and personally.